SUBVERSIVES: The FBI’s WAR on STUDENT RADICALS and REAGAN’S RISE TO POWER, by Seth Rosenfeld

I am reading SUBVERSIVES, the book it took Mr. Rosenfeld over 30 years to research and write. He recently won the 2013 PEN Literary Award for Research Nonfiction. As a member of PEN, I attended the ceremony that honored Mr. Rosenfeld along with all the other PEN Literary Award winners. I listened to him speak and afterward his was the first book I chose to read out of the “winners’ book bag” (the “book bag” being another story altogether). Mr. Rosenfeld’s book is proving to be an excellent first choice. Through his determination and dogged research he is illuminating one of the most tumultuous and important times in the history of the United States. I cannot put it down.

“EMA”

by DHC

copyright 10/17/2013.

(Post swim - The tyranny of the Tea Party and their “Speaker” Boehner)

1. I had a conversation this afternoon with a family member who lives in the beautiful state of North Carolina. North Carolina is one of the many states that chose to “opt out” of the ObamaCare Exchanges which means that unlike California where I live, North Carolinians must now purchase private health insurance without any assistance from the government which also means that rates will increase for baby boomers and older people because Blue Cross has a monopoly on health care in North Carolina. Rates for younger people will decrease, for now.

1A. Before some of you readers of mine bust a gut and envision strangling me with a blood pressure cuff, remember this: North Carolina, like the other states that “opted out,” did this because they assume North Carolinians are too stupid to figure out that “opting out” is a ruse designed to make North Carolinians rebel against ObamaCare and thus destroy it. AND, the question I always ask but no pundit or politician (sometimes both) never ask the Tea Partiers is: who is paying for health care now, pre-ObamaCare, for the uninsured who seek medical treatment in Emergency Rooms and in Urgent Care Centers and in inner city Clinics? The answer: We the taxpayers, and the hospitals and clinics and doctors who treat countless numbers of patients on a daily basis across the country who cannot afford to pay.

2. One of the top 3 reasons for filing bankruptcy in this country is due to catastrophic illness that strikes both the uninsured and the insured. And who pays for that? We, the taxpayers, in higher premiums.

I am an American.

I was born in Virginia to generations of proud Virginians on my mother’s side and on my father’s side to his eager parents who immigrated from Scotland to Canada, where my father was born, and then to California where my father was raised. Both sides of my family love this country, it has been good to us and we have been good to it, to America. Now, my country, the one I inherited from my people, is consuming itself like a flesh eating disease and I am sickened and saddened and furious about the reality show that has become our government.

It is not funny. The pundits all seem to think it is because it is reality television at its most dispiriting. It is all about the ratings.

Who is winning, they smirk? Who is losing, they opine?

For God’s sake.

The losers are the American people, our way of life, our existence.

Who is winning? Every nation who hates us, every individual enemy we have around the globe. They are winning.

Don’t think so? Hide and watch.

The Tea Party believes, as does our Supreme Court, that corporations are people. I can tell you this, not one of these petty Tea Party obstructionists would last a day if they were employed by “anyone” else than the government, the government they are destroying.

(to be continued after I take a swim)